In Forests at Dusk
by Pieequals36
Summary: Freddie/Sam with a whole lotta angst thrown in just for the fun. Hints at Creddie from time to time. One-shot.


_A/N: _So this is a mess. Like seriously, I wrote it in a half hour in a rush of creativity. It's heavy, it's angsty and be forewarned, Freddie is a huge dick in it. Not has a huge dick (get your minds out of the gutter :P) IS a huge dick. It's also short. Very short. And not beta'd. And not worth your time...so yeah...enjoy :D

_i. There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness. - Friedrich Neitzsche_

She thinks it has to stop hurting at some point. Everything heals – hell she knows that from before. But still she writhes in pain, clasping her knee to her chest and fighting the sting in her eyes.

Carly is being all _Carly, _dramatic with eyes closed and tugging on Freddie's arm telling her to fix her best friend. He sighs and she feels something empty – like he begrudges the help. She keeps her eyes shut repeating the mantra of _"I'm fine, I don't need help", _but she feels a cool rush of air on her staved knee and screws open an eye. The top of his head is all she sees and still feels the air (or what she now assumes to be his breath) lapping against her skin.

"Ready?" he asks from below and she's just about to question it when the sting of antiseptic sprays against the wound. Reflexively she hits him on the side of the head (and she kinda/sorta regrets it because after all the nerd is just trying to _help_) but to her surprise he mans up, barely flinching. _Is he that used to it? _

He stands now, nudging her knees apart and placing himself there. She doesn't even realize how she watches his methodic movements; removing a band-aid from the box, unpeeling the backing, before she tears her eyes up and is met with an intense brown-eyed stare. Her skin feels like goose bumps, crawling with something, almost _humming_.

_Slap. _

She cries out, pained when his palm slaps the band-aid on her abrasion, forceful and not at all like before.

"Christ!" she cries, clutching at her knee again. She's about to admonish him for being a dickhead/asshole/jerk when she realizes the bastard is chuckling and it's thrumming through her veins, sending warmth shooting down her belly. She _likes it_, she fucking _likes it_ and she thinks about just how screwed up she must be.

She makes a resolve to never let him hurt her again, not before she gets the chance.

_ii. Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. - Martin Luther King Jnr_.

She doesn't ever want it to stop hurting. Not if hurting means he keeps doing what he's doing ever so well against her neck.

She's acutely aware of the hard of his door handle sticking into her back leaving what will be tell tale bruises tomorrow. She moans, and she can't tell if it's from the pain or the pleasure when he bites down on her soft skin.

She claws desperately, fingernails trailing down bare skin, hands grabbing roughly at her thighs. Anger and passion are two odd things she concludes. She thinks this is why they are as aggressive as they are. The fighting spills into the other things they've come accustomed to doing and it all just accumulates into one big fallout. Usually it's a slap or a punch, but recently it's a kiss, or a hickey or something else_ entirely_. She gasps when it turns tender, his fingers tracing the scar on her knee.

"Is that from when…?" he drags off following the pattern with his fingertips, enamored with the form. She grows impatient with the boy's sudden distraction and presses her lips to his in an urgent, angry kiss.

She can't let him be nice; this needs to hurt.

_iii. Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend. - Albert Camus_

He drags her to the Pear Store the day the new Pear Phone is released, because he wants to be the first in line, because he wants company on a cold November morning, and because Carly wouldn't get out of bed. She tries not to think of the last reason (even though second place is a position Sam Puckett knows best). She's not sure why she agrees (_because you like him)_ but she does, and that's why he's fed her two hotdogs and three Starbucks and is allowing her to play Chinese burns with his free arm.

Suddenly she's cold and he notices, wordlessly taking her hands and stuffing them into the front pockets of his over-sized Boston hoody. His hands keep hers nestled in the warmth and he's unbearably close. She thinks of the last time they were this close in the back of his mother's Volvo Sedan and she shivers.

"Still cold?" he queries, in a voice that turns her insides to girly mush.

"Bored," she informs him with narrow blue eyes. He assures her that it's nearly time but a part of her doesn't want the store to ever open, her head nestling comfortably in the chest of his jumper. She feels oddly like a _girlfriend _and she wants to ask if he feels the same but realizes how uber-gay that would sound and instead pulls back, jumping on the balls of her feet. She tries not to notice that he barely acknowledges.

Surely enough the store opens on time, hoards of nerds and tech freaks spilling inside, the air buzzing with commotion. Freddie walks right up to the counter and asks for two. Sam raises a quizzical eyebrow that _of course_ he doesn't notice.

"One thousand," the teller informs, taking his cash without counting.

He takes them both, hanging the bag of his wrist and stuffing his hands back in his pockets before mutely leading the way out of the store.

"Two? What, are you having a tech-nerd brain explosion? One to each ear?" she smiles, following close behind.

"One's for Carly for graduation," he throws back over his shoulder. She stops, stunned.

_Did he actually just bring her to buy some other girl a present?_

"Sam?" he asks, turning on his heel, "You coming?"

She nods, swallowing before following him out into the fresh morning air.

This shouldn't hurt. But it does.

_iv. Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. - Robert Frost_

The thing she likes most about their evenings at the river is the sunlight. Or rather the dimming of it. She loves the aluminous orange, the sound of the birds and the dirt under her finger nails.

She's intensely aware of him filming her with his phone from the rocks, and she glares back.

"I like your dress," he calls out to her.

She looks down at the flowery cream sundress, her brown boots splashed with the current of water. She shrugs, not really caring if he caught her acknowledgment. Sam Puckett never considered herself a complicated girl, and she never once considered she would be a complicated girl with Freddie Benson. So it caught her off guard when she showed up at his apartment to watch DVD's at three in the morning or when she waited at the end of the school day only for him to drive her out here to make out on the river bank. She doesn't like wanting him, but this increasing _need _is what really makes her uncomfortable.

She hikes back from the river, falling down beside him on the gritty embankment. He's still filming, smiling and filming.

"What are you doing Nerd?" she asks, looking right into the camera.

"Capturing the moment Sam Puckett wore a dress," he tells her, chortling, "I think I'll make it into a documentary. Sam Puckett and the….whoa."

"Whoa what? Is someone here?" she asks, turning her head, uneasy.

"No…you just looked really pretty in that light," he explains, voice husky in a way that shakes her.

"Way to be a corndog," she sneers looking away, suddenly bashful. When she turns back around he's right there, in her personal space, phone away. She can feel his breath against her face, her heart pounding in her ribcage when he leans in and barely kisses her. Her hands come up to cover his face and suddenly it's deep and tender and everything that before wasn't. She can hear their breathing, deep and heavy, every little movement he makes to scoot closer. He leans her back against the ground, propping himself up on one elbow while his fingers toy with the top buttons of her dress. He's looking at her with those big, brown soulful eyes and she just wants to be _lost_.

_I think I'm falling in love with you._

But this she doesn't say.

_Make love to me. _

This she does.

_v. But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way. - Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey_

She thinks it has to stop hurting at some point. Everything stops hurting. But she knows with the way Carly looked at him when he took her hand in the mall, _she knows _everything is different. There'll be no more trips to the river, no late night DVD's, no waking up in his bed in his Boston hoody.

And it _fucking hurts._

She cradles her knees to her chest, mascara streaming down her face and she feels like she should do something _fucking tragic _like down a bottle of vodka followed by some anonymous one night stand, but she can't even bring herself to be a mess.

She doesn't want to be the girl who cries because the boy loves someone else. She wants to be the girl who says _fuck it _and carries on, because hell, what else can you do? What are her options? Does she go to the boy she loves/hates and tell him she loves him, tell him to dump her best friend because she knows_ he's_ the one? Does she fall apart because her heart is breaking in that Twilight, teen angst way she used to make fun of?

No.

She makes a resolve. She won't let him hurt her again. Next time it's her turn.

_A/N: This is mostly for my good friends Beth, Emma and Josh just to prove I'm not falling out of love with the fandom and certainly will be sticking around ;) _

_Also I know, totally OOC but I fancied being a bit arty tonight. It's two am. And I'm writing short fanfiction. I have no life, please take pity :)_


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